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Saturday, 6 August 2016

My BOOK DEAL moment !!!!!!

In case you missed it...I'm thrilled to be able to shout to all who'll listen, that I have a book deal! YAY!The wonderful team at Avon (HarperCollins) have signed my debut novel, SAVING SOPHIE, a psychological thriller, along with a second novel.See the official Bookseller announcement here - am jumping up and down a bit about this!Saving Sophie will be published as an ebook (Maze imprint) on the 12th August - yes, that's 6 DAYS away - and a paperback will follow (Avon imprint) on 15th December 2016. How mad is that? Am so excited!It's available for pre-order right now! Yep - a paperback too. I can't begin to express how much that means :) This past year has been a whirlwind of a journey.As those who have followed will know, I signed with Anne Williams, with the Kate Hordern Literary Agency, in June last year. The novel she signed was 'Portrayal' - the one I'd entered in the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award - and had been longlisted for.But this was an unfinished novel. So I set about finishing it and then sent the completed first draft to Anne. I then worked with Anne to shape the novel - which included scrapping a whole point of view (eek!) - before it was finally ready for submission to publishers. After a few disappointing, yet fairly positive rejections (I know that doesn't make sense - well, to people other than writers) someone fell in love with it ... Yes, fairy story right there ...The lovely Natasha Harding, commissioning editor at Avon, wanted my novel! And there followed some pretty serious nail biting while I waited to find out if the rest of the team felt the same way.Thankfully, they did.It was the strangest feeling to know that a publisher wanted to publish my novel. And quickly! Of course, that's the point - the reason you put yourself through all of this process: the writing of the novel, getting a submission package together, trying to gain an agent ... but when it happens, it seems unreal. For me, I was ridiculously excited, yet also ridiculously scared! It was really going to happen.No longer chasing a dream - I'd caught it.A meeting was arranged. I was going to London. To HarperCollins tower!

Right by The Shard!

It was an amazing experience.Just walking past the books that had been published by them, seeing some of my favourite authors - it was surreal. And everyone I met was lovely and very welcoming. I'm utterly thrilled to be a part of this amazing team and am looking forward to working with them to unleash Saving Sophie into the world.Thanks to everyone who has been alongside me and supported me during each step of this journey.Here's to the next step... You can grab Saving Sophie at the pre-order price of just 99p from:Amazon UK : HEREAmazon US : HERE